Friday, December 06, 2013

The Czech novelist, Milan Kundera, once wrote that the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.

This is why governments jail "subversives," radicals who oppose the conventional wisdom to such an extent that they might actually foment change. It is far better to keep the populace ignorant. This tactic usually works, for who among us, who among the world of humanity, can say how much change for the good could have come from those who languished in jail?

This tactic usually works, but in one case, the case of Nelson Mandela, it did not. People refused to forget, because the power of his idea, that all people deserve freedom and all people deserve equality, was so enormous that even the regime of apartheid South Africa could not silence him, could not make us forget.

And when he was freed, and memory won out, when all around him counseled war, when all around him counseled him to rage and anger, he would say "Man's goodness is a flame that can be hidden but never extinguished."

It is hard to fathom that a man who dies at 95 was taken from us too soon, but Mandiba, you will be missed. Your fight has only just begun.

You can blow out a candle But you can't blow out a fire Once the flames begin to catch The wind will blow it higher

"Liberals got women the right to vote. Liberals got African-Americans the right to vote. Liberals created Social Security and lifted millions of elderly people out of poverty. Liberals ended segregation. Liberals passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act. Liberals created Medicare. Liberals passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act. What did Conservatives do? They opposed them on every one of those things...every one! So when you try to hurl that label at my feet, 'Liberal,' as if it were something to be ashamed of, something dirty, something to run away from, it won't work, Senator, because I will pick up that label and I will wear it as a badge of honor." -- Matt Santos, The West Wing